Rooting for the morally questionable protagonist
How Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and The Wolf of Wall Street create predominantly
sympathetic allegiances for their morally questionable protagonists.
Anne van der Klift | 6117066 | June 27, 2014 | Master Thesis Media Studies: Film Studies
Supervisor: Assimakis Tseronis | Second reader: Floris Paalman | University of Amsterdam
1
T
ABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract
2
Introduction
3
PART ONE
6
1. The spectator-character relationship
6
Terminology and theory: allegiance and sympathy
6
No second chance for a first impression?
10
2. Character engagement and morality
13
Morality: what is commonly perceived as moral and immoral?
13
Mechanisms and strategies of character engagement
14
Perverse allegiance: why we rarely sympathize with a killer because he kills 16
3. Reasons to sympathize with a character
19
Friendly to dogs: reasons in narrative
19
Neat haircut: reasons in film style
21
PART TWO
24
4. Scorsese and the morally questionable
24
5. Taxi Driver: redeeming pity and reassurance
28
Opening scene: recognizing troubled insomniac Travis Bickle
28
God’s lonely man: sympathy for Bickle’s disturbed mind and vulnerability
30
Redeemability as reassurance after challenges for the allegiance
33
6. Goodfellas: Henry Hill as the child of the gangster family
37
Character exposition: recognizing mischievous Henry Hill
37
Further representation: Henry Hill as the grey amongst the black
39
7. The Wolf of Wall Street: Jordan Belfort sweet-talks us into it
43
Character exposition: comically recognizing slick banker Jordan Belfort
43
A younger Belfort: eliciting allegiance and cues for moral disengagement
45
Supporting characters, relatability, desirability and perversity
49
Conclusion
52
2
A
BSTRACT
This thesis was motivated by the apparent discrepancy between the theoretical claims that a character’s morality determines the spectator’s sympathy and the fact that spectators regularly find themselves sympathizing with immoral protagonists. This thesis therefore seeks to answer the question how a film creates and manages a positive attitude of the spectator towards a protagonist who has a questionable morality. To answer this, theories from film studies, which mostly focus on the film text, will be complemented with theories from communication studies, which are mostly based on spectator research. With the help of Murray Smith’s structure of sympathy and Raney’s additions to Dolf Zillmann’s affective disposition theory I argue that a spectator usually forms an evaluation of a character rather quickly and actively looks for reasons to maintain their sympathetic or antipathetic allegiance. Analyses of the portrayal of the morally questionable protagonists of Taxi Driver, Goodfellas and The Wolf of Wall Street prove that films employ an array of strategies to foreground reasons to sympathize and to mute reasons the viewer may have to not sympathize. In doing this, they elicit the spectator’s sympathies and create and maintain a long term allegiance for the protagonist, even when he is the morally questionable one.
Keywords: character engagement, structure of sympathy, recognition, alignment, allegiance, affective disposition theory, morality, morally questionable protagonist, Martin Scorsese.
3
I
NTRODUCTION
When Brooklyn gangster Henry Hill introduces his fellow wise guy Jimmy in Goodfellas (1990), he says: “Jimmy was the kind of guy that rooted for bad guys in the movies.” What he is saying with this is that Jimmy is a really tough guy. It is a wink at the spectator of Goodfellas, who may find himself rooting for Jimmy, who has just been established as a seriously dangerous man. Probably, what Hill means by ‘bad guys’ are the antagonists, the characters that hinder the protagonist’s journey. They do not necessarily have to be ‘bad’, though the antagonist classically is bad, of course. Yet what if the protagonist is a bad guy? We find ourselves rooting for the ‘bad’ protagonist all the time. Indeed, it is folk knowledge and common occurrence that spectators sympathize with gangsters in The Sopranos (1999-2007), a killer in Dexter (2006-2013), violent meth producers in Breaking Bad (2008-2013) and so on. Although these TV shows indeed seem to represent a new trend, elaborately covered by popular and scientific media alike1, the morally
questionable protagonist has been here all along. The popularity and amount of classic gangster films, which usually have morally questionable protagonists, is proof enough. Yet actually, it is curious that people can be made to feel sympathy for characters who kill, steal or cheat their way through a film.
An apparent discrepancy is present in scientific studies on the spectator-character relationship as well. Many scholars, amongst which Dolf Zillmann and Murray Smith, relate sympathizing with a character to the spectator’s evaluation of the character’s morality. So, on the one hand theories about character engagement place emphasis on the spectator’s moral judgments, while on the other hand experience shows that spectators regularly and unproblematically sympathize with immoral or morally questionable protagonists. The question arises: how is the spectator stimulated to sympathize with an immoral protagonist when theory emphasizes the importance of a character’s morality?
In the first research on the topic of the spectator-character relationship, the term character identification turned out to be a common notion. Just like ‘rooting’ for a character, ‘identifying’ with a character is a commonly heard expression amongst film spectators. Nevertheless, the definition of the term ‘identification’ and how and when it occurs is difficult to grasp. As an alternative, Murray Smith formulated a theory to understand and analyse the processes a spectator goes through when sympathizing with a character. The occurrence in
1 Such as Brett Martin’s book about the complicated male protagonists in television series (Martin 2013),
or an article on Psychology Today that wonders why the spectator enjoys the recent television series with antihero protagonists (Bender 2013).
4 which the spectator develops a strong, sympathetic attitude towards the character is called ‘allegiance’ (1995, 75). This is a response from the spectator that is elicited by the way the film presents the information about a character. So, ‘rooting’ for a character is one of the results of this occurrence. Thus, one can conclude that a film has the ability to stimulate the spectator to root for its protagonist, and apparently even the morally questionable one. Therefore, my thesis question is: how do films elicit and manage a spectator’s allegiance for a morally questionable protagonist?
To answer this question, this thesis will complement theories from film studies with theories from communication studies. In film studies, scholars engaged with the spectator-character relationship are interested in the way it is a co-product of film and spectator with a focus on the film text. Scholars in communication studies, in turn, have carried out empirical researches among spectators and formulated theories on the basis of the results. These help understand how a spectator evaluates characters. The two fields have studied the topic independently, but their theories have never been combined. This thesis will use them together, because combined they provide a more complete understanding of the processes involved when a spectator sympathizes with a (morally questionable) character.
This thesis consists of Two Parts. In Part One, I seek to discover what comes into play when a spectator sympathizes with a character. To answer this, I will draw from several sources in literature. In Part Two, I will use this theoretical framework to analyse three films by Martin Scorsese that have morally questionable protagonists. I aim to identify several means the films employ to stimulate allegiance for a morally questionable protagonist.
In the first chapter, I will more generally try to understand the spectator-character relationship and the process of engaging with a character. First, I will look into the spectator-character relationship as a concept: how have scholars previously approached and understood the occurrence. Thus I will be able to understand the field and to situate this thesis in the discussions. Against Cohen and Gaut, and in line with Carroll and Smith, I argue for dismissing the term ‘identification’ as a useful analytical tool for textual analysis. Instead, I combine Smith’s structure of sympathy with Arthur Raney’s additions to Dolf Zillmann’s affective disposition theory and claim that a spectator actively looks for reasons to maintain a developed allegiance.
Chapter Two is dedicated to understanding how a character’s morality plays a role in sympathizing with characters. To be able to know when a character can be considered morally questionable in the first place, I will first attempt to define what one can assume are commonly accepted moral standards. Then, I will outline mechanisms (that can be employed by films) that can influence the spectator’s evaluation of the character’s morality. One might argue that a spectator can also sympathize with a morally questionable protagonist precisely because he behaves immorally, yet I will argue that this is rarely the case.
5 As the first chapter argues that a spectator actively looks for reasons to maintain his2
sympathetic or antipathetic feelings, and the second chapter has outlined which mechanisms can influence the spectator in this search for reasons, the question remains: where from can the spectator draw reasons to sympathize with a character? In Chapter Three I will therefore outline factors in narrative and film style that a spectator may find to maintain his allegiance. They will not compose an exhaustive list but give a general idea about what kinds of aspects the spectator can find to feel sympathy for a character.
Then, in Part Two, to examine how films make use of everything described in Part One, I will analyse three films by Martin Scorsese that have morally questionable protagonists. To be clear, I do not aim to research whether the spectator is allied with the morally questionable protagonists of these films, as every spectator experience is different. I will be doing textual analysis to research how a film guides its spectators to sympathizing with its protagonist. I will look at the films’ opening sequence and character exposition (which do not always go together) and analyse how the character is first portrayed in terms of narrative, such as dialogue and position to other characters, and film style, such as cinematography, mise-en-scène (including the physical appearance of the character), speech and music. Next, I will analyse what reasons the film provides for the spectator to maintain or challenge the first (positive) valence the spectator shaped of the character, and how some reasons are foregrounded while others are veiled so as to create a sympathetic allegiance.
In Chapter Four I will more elaborately argue why the protagonists in the three films are morally questionable and thus good objects for analysis. The first film, analysed in Chapter Five is Taxi Driver (1976), about a lonely, troubled New York City taxi driver who kills a robber and plots an attack on the president candidate, yet ends up saving a teenage prostitute. Goodfellas is a classic gangster drama about young Henry Hill’s rise to being a successful mobster in Brooklyn, New York, which will be analysed in Chapter Six. Thirdly, in Chapter Seven, I will analyse The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), about Wall Street charlatan Jordan Belfort. He has his (illegal) way with money, takes every drug imaginable, and cheats on his wife with numerous prostitutes. The three films differ from each other in morality, setting and tone, thus composing a varied corpus from which I expect to find both differing and recurring ways for a film to elicit allegiance for a morally questionable protagonist. This will then explain how everyone can be the person who “roots for the bad guys”.
2 When I speak of characters and spectators, I refer to them as being male. I do not aim to claim things
about male spectators and male characters only, nor am I unaware of the existence of female spectators or morally questionable female protagonists. I only do this because it would harm the readability of this thesis to refer to ‘he/she’ all the time. So Iwhen I speak of ‘him’ when talking about ‘the spectator’ or ‘the character’, I mean any spectator, male or female.
6
PART
ONE
1.
T
HE SPECTATOR
-
CHARACTER
RELATIONSHIP
For the past twenty-five years or so, many scholars have taken it upon themselves to examine the spectator-character relationship. In everyday talk about films (and other narratives), people often say they ‘identified’ with a certain character, and ‘character identification’ has thus also become a common notion amongst scholars who tried to define the spectator-character relationship. Theorists studying film characters have dealt with identification in one way or another. In the first section of this chapter, I will very briefly outline the discussions about character identification to be able to understand the background of the conceptualization of the spectator-character relationship. Following Murray Smith, I will dismiss the term identification. Instead, the term engagement will be used to describe the processes involved in the spectator-character relationship in general. Also in line with Smith, I will use the three levels of the structure of sympathy. One of them, allegiance, refers to the spectator’s sympathetic attitude towards the character, which is directed by the text. In line with Plantinga I use the term ‘sympathy’ as a more short term instance of caring for a character, which aids in the creation and maintenance of allegiance. In the second section of this chapter, I will argue for Arthur Raney’s additions to Dolf Zillmann’s affective disposition theory, namely that the first valence of a character is dominant in the shaping of allegiances. I want to combine Raney’s theory with Smith’s structure of sympathy because it helps understand how the processes of recognition, alignment and allegiance function.
Terminology and theory: allegiance and sympathy
As described, I will start with briefly going into the discussion about character identification, because this term is often used as the theoretical term for the spectator-character relationship. As will soon become clear, it is not a useful term for approaching the relationship for analysis. Therefore, I will explain and use Smith’s structure of sympathy, with ‘allegiance’ as its most important component. Furthermore, I will explain sympathy as a more short-term positive feeling of the spectator about the character, another key concept in this thesis.
7 Noel Carroll is one of the scholars who attempt to define the term ‘identification’, and, as a consequence, he argues for rejecting this term. First of all, according to him, many seem to use the notion to describe a situation in which the spectator mistakenly believes that the character’s perspective is his own (1990, 89-90). Of course, this does not make sense, for a spectator very well knows he is watching a fiction with a protagonist different from himself, or he would find himself looking for knives when Scream’s (1996) Ghostface shows up on his television screen. Yet, as Carroll then argues, one also does not find his emotional state to be identical to that of the protagonist(s), as the spectator often knows more and/or different information than a character and thus has different thoughts and feelings (90). Yet, Carroll continues, if character identification can only apply to the spectator-character relationship when it means there is a “partial correspondence” between the emotional states of the spectator and the character, then why call the phenomenon ‘identification’ at all (92, emphasis added, AvdK)? For “sharing emotive responses” (93) is so vague it would also mean that a spectator would identify not only with a character, but also with every other spectator who, for example, cried at the same moment in the film. And the idea that the spectator has this response as a result of his identification with the character because he makes his/her interests his own, is dismissed as well, as this does not have necessarily to be the case (94).
Murray Smith also signals problems with the term. He distinguishes three definitions of the term identification with regard to characters: 1. the spectator mistakes himself for the central character, 2. the spectator imagines the events of the narrative from the perspective of the character, and 3. the spectator imagines himself in the exact situation of the character (1995, 80). The first explanation is the one dismissed by both Carroll, and Smith. Smith does not necessarily reject the other two, as they are types of imagining that might take place when dealing with fictions, but he does point to empirical problems. After all, a film rarely provides one character’s perspective only, and the spectator never only imagines his experience from the character’s point of view.
To deal with the problematic term of identification, Smith puts forward a useful system for breaking down and understanding the processes going on when a spectator engages with characters. This is the ‘structure of sympathy’, a system consisting of three different levels of engagement a spectator goes through when watching a film (illustrated in image 1 (1995, 105)). Smith also importantly emphasizes the co-operative activity of the spectator here. The three levels in the structure of sympathy “denote not just inert textual systems, but responses, neither solely in the text nor solely in the spectator” (1995, 82).
8 The first of the three levels is ‘recognition’, which is the spectator’s construction of a character. This is the most basic process, at which the spectator recognizes textual elements (such as images of a body, sounds of a voice and, at a more complex level, textually described traits) as a continuous character, with character traits and behaviour like real people (82). Also, a spectator is placed in a structure of ‘alignment’, depending on how much access he has to the aural and visual information the character perceives, and to what is going on inside the character. To better understand and analyse alignment, Smith breaks it down into two tools. The first is ‘spatio-temporal attachment’, the extent to which the narration is restricted to one character. Is the spectator taken to the same locations and events as the character, and does the spectator hear and see what the character hears and sees? The second part of Smith’s alignment, is ‘subjective access’, the extent to which the subjectivity of the character is revealed (83). Does the spectator get to know what the character is feeling and thinking? Next to alignment, the spectator evaluates the character “on the basis of the values they embody, and hence form more-or-less sympathetic or more-or-less antipathetic ‘allegiances’ with them” (75, quotation marks added, AvdK). This is where a spectator shapes his opinion of a character based on a moral evaluation and where he possibly sympathizes with him/her (yet also possibly gets antipathetic feelings instead). So in summary, the difference between alignment and allegiance is that alignment can be seen as the narrative information a text provides the spectator with, while allegiance can be seen as the way the text directs the spectator’s evaluation of this information (1999, 220). Thus, in my analysis, I will look for the information the film presents the spectator, and most importantly how it presents this information to direct the spectator’s
9 allegiances. Because it seems that it is in the way the film presents the information, that the spectator is guided to sympathize with an otherwise morally questionable protagonist.
One might assume that a spectator automatically sympathizes with the protagonist, with whom the spectator is usually aligned, to watch the film the way the film is supposed to be watched. This is too simple, though. As Smith writes, it is not the fact that the spectator is aligned with a character that he evaluates and feels for a character, but it is what he learns about this character through that alignment (Smith 1999, 221). There are films that have the spectator aligned with an evil protagonist, yet do not elicit sympathetic allegiances with him. Maniac (1982), about a murdering rapist, is an example Smith gives (220). Yet, and Smith mentions this only marginally (1995, 188), the fact that by far most narratives elicit sympathy for the characters with whom the spectator is aligned, has the spectator expecting to sympathize with the protagonist and thus looking for reasons to feel that sympathy for the character(s) he is aligned with. It is important that, because the spectator is used to being stimulated to feel sympathetic towards the protagonist, with whom he is used to being aligned, the spectator will automatically look for reasons to sympathize with the protagonist, especially if there is only one protagonist.
The term sympathy is not clearly defined by Smith. And as Carl Plantinga notes (2010, 38), Smith’s theory is sometimes unclear about the distinction between sympathy and allegiance. Though sympathy is a possible part of a spectator’s allegiance with a character, the terms sympathy and allegiance seem to be used by Smith interchangeably, while he has explained how antipathy can also be part of an allegiance (1995, 75). In line with Plantinga, I define allegiance as the more long-term ‘pro’ attitude a spectator can have towards a character (2010, 36). Sympathy, in turn is a more short-termed occurrence that can but does not have to be based on moral judgment. It both aids and results from allegiance. Plantinga argues that sympathy is granted to those that are in danger and need protection, or are treated unfairly (41). In this definition of Plantinga, sympathy is like pity. Though seeing a character in need often does lead to sympathy, I want to use a broader definition of sympathy that addresses the feeling of favour, support or loyalty; to care for a person or character. This might be triggered by a character’s poor situation, but does not necessarily have to be so. People also feel sympathies for and/or tend towards allegiance with characters who are a lot like them, for example. A spectator can find them resembling themselves on the basis of all kinds of factors, such as sex, race, physical appearance, hobbies, social status, family situation etcetera. On top of that, as Smith remarks as well (1999, 221), people also tend to feel sympathies for a character who has character traits or a way of life that they do not have, but desire to have. Obviously, this desire can be for all kinds of things, such as money, love, courage or freedom.
10 Sympathy is usually mentioned together with empathy and the two are often confused as well. As explained, sympathy is to feel for someone, to care for a person and have feelings when something happens to him that might be different from the feelings of the character, whereas empathy is to feel with someone, to have similar feelings to his. Smith places empathy next to his structure of sympathy, but argues that it works together rather than distinctly from it. He mentions different kinds of empathic reactions (1995, 102), that are rather involuntary responses like jumping up at a shock or getting a lump in one’s throat when someone is crying. These responses can aid in eliciting sympathy.
In this section, I have briefly shown that the term identification with regard to characters has not had a coherent definition throughout the different fields and studies. Because of this, and the fact that the term is not necessarily needed to be able speak of the spectator-character relationship, I will avoid it from here on. Smith’s approach to the spectator-spectator-character relationship with three levels of engagement is a much more useful tool to help analyse the different processes involved when spectators engage with a character. According to his structure of sympathy, a spectator constructs a character at the recognition and has a certain amount of subjective or spatio-temporal access as part of the alignment. On a third level, allegiance is the long-term ‘pro’ attitude of a spectator towards a character, which accounts for a spectator ‘rooting’ for a character. This allegiance, in turn, can be governed by sympathies: shorter term feelings of caring for a character that may not be based on morality at all. Furthermore, sympathizing with a character needs two players: the text (carefully constructed by the filmmaker) and the spectator (who brings along his personal taste and background knowledge on films and the world in general).
No second chance for a first impression?
As briefly established in the introduction of this chapter, there has been research about character engagement in the field of communication studies as well. Arthur Raney came up with a theory that is very helpful in combination with Smith’s structure of sympathy; it further details how the spectator goes through the three processes. In line with his theory, I argue in this section that the exposition of a character, or the recognition stage in Smith’s sense, influences our allegiances to a great extent. Furthermore, the spectator actively looks for reasons to maintain the first valence made during the recognition.
Raney’s theory builds on Dolf Zillmann’s affective disposition theory, which Zillmann formulated out of interest in spectators’ enjoyment of media. The theory has seen many slightly different alterations to apply to different media contents and signals that spectators are “untiring moral monitors” who judge every action of a character by its rightness or wrongness (Zillmann 2000, 54). Thus, they form affective dispositions that can change over the course of a
11 film, when new actions of a character get different verdicts than the ones he did before. The main objection for the affective disposition theory is that it suggests that we get an affective disposition (or sympathy) with characters that act in morally correct ways, and does not account for sympathies for characters who are morally questionable. Arthur Raney also locates this flaw. Therefore, Raney proposed two additions to the affective disposition theory, namely that “the initial formation of an affective disposition towards a character may at times actually precede specific moral evaluations of the character” (2004, 361). And, as a consequence, spectators interpret the character’s actions in line with that affective disposition to maintain the positive or negative attitude about him or her (361). In other words, sometimes the spectator has already shaped a valence of a character before he can evaluate him on moral grounds, and instead of evaluating each and every action, he is ready to explain morally ‘wrong’ actions of characters he sympathizes with, and dismiss neutral or morally ‘good’ actions of characters he has antipathies for.
The theory that the initial valence of a character is usually maintained has also been backed up by empirical research. Meir Sternberg has studied the exposition in fiction and calls this occurrence the primacy effect, in line with a psychological research about the enduring influence of first impressions (1978, 93). In this experiment, the participants read a story consisting of two parts about a fictitious character, “Jim”. In one half of the story, Jim behaves friendly and extrovert, and in the other half more introvert, unfriendly and shy. Some participants read a version of the story that had the friendly half first and the unfriendly half second, while others read the unfriendly half first and then the unfriendly one. Afterwards, the participants answered questions to compose a character sketch of Jim, and predicted his behaviour in particular given situations (93). In both cases, the first half was always taken to represent the ‘real’ Jim, while the second part was perceived as exceptional behaviour. This is called the primacy effect. Furthermore, the subjects failed to recognize the discrepancy between the two halves. They always justified Jim’s behaviour with arguments that were not necessarily explicit in the text, such as “sometimes he needs solitude” or “he was tired, or had an unhappy day” (94). So, as Raney has claimed, it seems that a spectator shapes his mental image of a character at the first meeting with him, or rather, in Sternberg’s terms, during the character
exposition. In film, this is the scene or sequence in which the film provides information that the
spectator cannot do without. According to Sternberg, this includes a character’s “appearance, traits and habitual behaviour” (1978, 1). Of course, a spectator can also change his opinion of someone when new information becomes available. Yet the experiment goes to show how important the initial impression is: people easily explain or justify behaviour to match their initial valence. So it makes sense that a spectator does not judge every action of a character, as
12 Zillmann’s theory suggests, but rather looks for reasons to match the actions with his initial affective disposition.
In summary, with Raney’s additions to Zillmann’s affective disposition theory, backed up by Sternberg’s empirical evidence of the primacy effect, I claim that the initial valence of a character, which is shaped in the character exposition and can but does not have to precede moral judgment, is often maintained by the spectator. He actively looks for reasons to preserve the first evaluation, and is willing to explain or justify behaviour that does not match this evaluation. By combining this theory with Smith’s structure of sympathy, it is easier to understand the processes going on when ‘meeting’ a character. Smith’s idea of the spectator’s first recognition of a character can be understood as the moment in which the spectator starts to shape his initial valence, and possibly, in Smith’s words, (start the foundations for) an allegiance. The spectator then actively looks for reasons to back up this developing allegiance.
13
2.
C
HARACTER ENGAGEMENT AND
MORALITY
Character engagement and morality are commonly accepted as related concepts. As I wrote in the previous chapter, Smith’s allegiance is based on a moral evaluation of a character (1995, 188), for example, and Zillman’s affective disposition theory also ascribes a big part of a spectator’s sympathy for a character to a moral evaluation of his actions. Even though in the previous chapter I have also argued with Raney that a first valence can precede moral evaluation, moral evaluations are not dismissed entirely. In this chapter I will focus on the role of morality in character engagement. I will briefly attempt to define the term morality in the first section. What is commonly perceived as moral and immoral? As this depends on cultural values, it is hard to define. Yet, it is necessary to understand what is commonly perceived as moral before a character can be understood and argued to be morally questionable at all. In the second section, I will outline processes that can occur and play a role in how a spectator evaluates a character’s morality. I will consider these processes ‘mechanisms’ that can determine how a spectator goes about in his search for reasons. The third section will be dedicated to tackling the argument that a spectator might simply sympathize with an immoral character precisely because he is immoral. If this would be the case, this thesis would be much less relevant, as it is based on the idea that a spectator gets allegiance with immoral characters
despite their immorality. However, I will argue with help of Smith’s concept of perverse
allegiance that it hardly ever occurs that a spectator gets allegiance with an immoral character because of his immoral behaviour.
Morality: what is commonly perceived as moral and immoral?
To be able to distinguish a morally questionable protagonist from a ‘hero’ protagonist, it is necessary to explain what morality is and what is perceived as good and bad according to this morality. In other words: what is moral and immoral? These are concepts that are hard to define, for, as Smith writes, moral norms are tacitly accepted “default values” (1995, 213). As such, these values are not a particular set of rules to abide to. They are based on religion, culture and/or philosophy. Therefore, I can only try to define morals on the basis of the cultural values
14 of the western world, in which the chosen films, and probably most of their spectators are situated.
People do not have a sense of moral code from the day they were born. They ‘adopt’ and develop them as they grow up (Kohlberg 1981). The moral standards that people then follow (or at least understand), in turn, are determined by cultural values. As such, morality can have different resulting norms in different cultures. Bernard Gert has attempted to formulate rules that are tacitly present in common morality of the Western world, by asking himself for what kind of behaviour people know they need an excuse (2004, 20). The rules Gert distinguishes are: do not kill, do not cause pain, do not disable, do not deprive of freedom, do not deprive of pleasure, do not deceive, keep your promises, do not cheat, obey the law and do your duty. Indeed, these guidelines show a lot of similarities with the Bible’s Ten Commandments. Smith also acknowledges that Christian values have had a dominant influence on Western cultural values (1995, 213).
Immoral behaviour is any behaviour that violates these rules without sufficient justification (Gert 2004, 20). Gert adds that also attempts to violate any of these rules are immoral, even if the act does not succeed (21). Instead of immoral, one can also be amoral. This is the case when a person is unaware or indifferent towards a set of moral standards. So an amoral person would behave against moral standards, yet not be conscious of this.
Mechanisms and strategies of character engagement
With the help of Smith and Zillmann I have established that morality plays a role when evaluating and then sympathizing with characters. And in the previous section I briefly outlined what is usually considered as moral and immoral behaviour. So, if a character behaves against these usually accepted moral codes, how does a spectator sympathize with him? There can be several mechanisms at work in a film, that the film can use as ‘strategies’, that can influence how a spectator evaluates a character morally, sometimes enabling or aiding allegiance. This section will explain how a film’s moral structure, a spectator’s previous experience with immoral protagonists and moral disengagement cues can help in eliciting allegiance for morally questionable protagonists.
At the first formation of an allegiance of a character, usually during the character exposition, immoral behaviour does not necessarily lead to a negative valence: the spectator does not always evaluate fictional characters on the basis of real-world moral standards only, but also on a set of moral codes that the film provides. Smith calls this the moral structure of the film, which is responsible for presenting characters as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ (1999, 220). So the spectator judges fictional characters not only by ‘normal’ morals, but also by the internal moral structure, the ‘system of values’, of the text. Thus, behaviour one would usually disapprove of in
15 real life can become preferable over that of other characters. Smith further explains that the system of values is part of a film’s co-text, the context within the text, which has its own values and beliefs to which the events of the narrative are set (194). Most of the times, the co-text is much like the world we live in. Then, the co-text does not need to be explicitly established, as the spectator shares the values it consists of. Sometimes, the story worlds of films have different values, also when, for example, real-world values have changed (think, for example, about Jud
Süss (1940)). A film’s moral structure and system of values does not entirely erase the
spectator’s sense of real-world morals though and can thus not be held solely responsible for why a spectator sympathizes with immoral protagonists. Therefore, it is still necessary to compare the moral structure to what one might expect to be commonly accepted real-world moral standards, to understand the morality of the character and the way that morality is presented.
Daniel Shafer and Arthur Raney have also looked for a film’s internal moral structure in communication studies, yet they approached it differently. Again going back to Zillmann’s affective disposition theory, they wanted to clarify how a spectator can enjoy antihero narratives, because (their definition of) the antihero is rather irreconcilable with this theory. The term antihero does not have one cohering definition, yet one recurring characteristic is that he has traits that oppose the ones of a traditional hero. The most important characteristic Shafer and Raney distinguish of the antihero, is that he is morally flawed (2012, 1029-30). Of the films in this thesis it is not always possible to speak of antiheroes. Nevertheless, the theory they formulated to clarify how a spectator sympathizes with an antihero is useful, because it suggests how spectators deal with the moral flaws of the protagonist. Though not backed up by empirical research, it is likely that spectators handle narratives with ‘regular’ morally questionable protagonists in a similar way.
Shafer and Raney refer to story schemata: a concept first used by Jean M. Mandler and Nancy S. Johnson for the internal representation of the building stones of a typical story that people use to understand and to recall a story (Mandler & Johnson 111). In other words, people come across stories that have very similar set ups and thus develop story schemata. When they read or hear a story, or watch a film, such a schema raises expectations for the development of the story. Shafer and Raney argue, in line with an earlier article of Raney’s, that a spectator can develop story schemata for antihero narratives and thus enjoy these narratives more or in different ways (Shafer & Raney 1028). Furthermore, their questionnaire research returned that viewers familiar with antihero narratives, and thus better developed story schemata for these, were able to separate moral judgments of the characters from their sympathizing with them (1042). In other words: they morally disengaged and found other reasons to sympathize with a character.
16 This disengagement, as Shafer and Raney write, can be stimulated by disengagement cues: reasons that justify the morally questionable actions or behaviour of the antihero (1039). The before mentioned motivation behind an action can be considered as such a disengagement cue, and a very important one. When Walter White in Breaking Bad (2008-2013) takes a turn towards the ‘bad’ to pay for his treatment and support his family, the spectator ‘turns off’ the moral judgment because White has such a relatable and ‘justified’ reason to start making meth. Another reason or justification could be that a character represents a morally preferable set of traits in relation to other characters within the story (Smith 1995, 188). This is the case when a film contains what Smith calls graduated moral structure, in which the characters can be located anywhere between the good and the evil (207). This occurrence is also effectively called “Black and Grey morality” in the TV Tropes wiki. Contrary to a “Black and White morality”, that conforms to a structure in which the hero is basically flawless and the antagonist purely evil (“Black and White Morality” 2014), in the black and grey moral orientation there is no flawless or essentially ‘good’ character, but solely characters that are different levels of ‘bad’ (“Black and Gray Morality” 2014). Being surrounded by ‘black’ moralities, can be a disengagement cue for the protagonist with the ‘grey’ morality: he is not that bad. Shafer and Raney’s disengagement cues are actually a way to establish a moral structure different from the real-world morality.
I have shown that a character’s immoral behaviour is not always judged to be so when we evaluate a character. A film’s internal moral structure can guide a spectator into what is right and wrong in the film’s co-text. Usually though, this co-text is very similar to the context of the spectator. Shafer and Raney have shown that a spectator familiar with antihero narratives is willing to morally disengage and look for different reasons to sympathize with a character. It is probable that spectators also handle ‘regular’ morally questionable protagonist this way when they have previous experience with morally flawed protagonists. The reasons that a spectator instead looks for may be found in other character traits, talents or, as I will argue in the next chapter, in the way the character is represented by the different aspects of a film’s style.
Perverse allegiance: why we rarely sympathize with a killer because he kills
One might object to the described mechanisms: they give explanations for the fact that a spectator can have allegiance with a character despite his immoral behaviour, yet, one might argue that it is also possible that a spectator actually has allegiance with a character because of his unfavourable behaviour. Do human beings sometimes not simply enjoy the forbidden? Indeed, if spectators have allegiance with immoral protagonists because they are immoral, the thesis question becomes much less relevant. Yet, in this section I argue with help from Smith that this is hardly ever the case. If a spectator has sympathy for a character because of his
17 immoral behaviour at all, it is usually because the character is mostly ‘good’ too, like in the case of Wolfenstein and Leites’ concepts of good-bad characters.
Smith has also thought about this instance of sympathizing with the immoral. He therefore figured that there can be cases of perverse allegiances. By perverse, he means a “deliberate violation of moral precepts” (1999, 217). Smith distinguishes between first-order perversity, in which case someone enjoys something that is morally or socially proscribed, and second-order perversity, in which case someone enjoys something because it is morally or socially proscribed (219). It is the second one that would be referred to when arguing that the spectator might sympathize with a character because of his or her immoral behaviour. Yet, as Smith argues, these instances of perverse allegiances are rather rare and usually used only temporarily (222). It often comes down to a “knowing, self-conscious, imaginative play with the morally undesirable in the domain of fiction” (225). As an example for an immoral character a spectator might sympathize with, Smith describes Hannibal Lecter of The Silence of the Lambs (1991): he is not only a dangerous psychopath, but also an intelligent, charismatic gentleman. Thus, the spectator may find himself getting an allegiance with him. Yet, as Smith argues as well, if the spectator does feel sympathies for him, it is not because he is a psychopath, but rather because he also happens to have other nice qualities. So in Hannibal Lecter’s case it is largely unlikely that the spectator feels sympathy for him as a perversity: any allegiance is despite his criminal and psychopathic characteristics.
This combination of nice character traits combined with unacceptable behaviour is why Smith argues Hannibal Lecter can be considered an attractive-bad character, in line with Martha Wolfenstein and Nathan Leites (Smith 1999: 227). Wolfenstein and Leites discuss ‘good-bad’ characters in Hollywood films of the late 1940s. These are characters that initially appear corrupt or ‘evil’ yet turn out to be essentially ‘good’. In the case of the ‘good-bad girl’, the woman is ‘bad’ because of her explicit sexuality, yet ultimately turns out to be just as ‘good’ and marriable as the regular nice girls. The ‘good-bad’ man is typically ‘bad’ because of his tendency to be violent (1950, 18). According to Wolfenstein and Leites, the good-bad character structure fascinates the spectator by having him experience the “suggested immoral wish-fulfilments” without feeling guilt. The spectator gets to experience immoral things he might want to do vicariously, yet does not have to feel guilty about it, because the characters “have not done anything” write Wolfenstein and Leites (300). They mean that often, characters in these films were falsely accused, but also that sometimes the characters were redeemed by all kinds of positive factors. Murray Smith adds that characters “have not done anything” in the sense that the deeds of these characters are fictional: they do not exist and their wrongdoings did not actually happen. The spectator is thus able to indulge in forbidden, immoral things (both because or despite the fact that they are immoral), while ultimately “being reassured that we,
18 like the ‘good-bad’ characters, are attractive and morally worthy” (1999: 224). And this, in turn, raises a sort of moral disengagement in the spectator: he can enjoy immoral behaviour because the moral standards of the film and the immoral behaviour do not apply to him. The “good-bad” character is thus an easy way to ‘play’ with forbidden desires. Because these characters are essentially good, even though some of their behaviour might be bad, the spectator does not have to worry about indulging in their ‘badness’: essentially, he is good too.
However, the pleasure of the good-bad character is there by virtue of the good, the return to cultural standards in the end. It is only because of the presence of the ‘good’ that the spectator gets to enjoy the ‘bad’. So even if we could call it a perverse allegiance when a spectator is allied with the character who, for example, kills the annoyingly correct police officer (which would be considered immoral, yet might be something someone fantasizes about), it is only so because of the fact that this killing character is redeemable by other factors. Thus, considering the distinction between the long-term allegiance and the short-term sympathy, it would be more correct to speak of a perverse sympathy. A real perverse allegiance rarely exists and might only happen in the case of an actually immoral spectator. Rather, perverse sympathies can occur, but they are aided by redeemable factors or a return to cultural standards in the end.
In this chapter, I have first tried to define the term ‘morality’ and what is usually considered as ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ behaviour in Western society: one should do his duty and not harm others in any way. Also, a film’s moral structure can determine whether immoral behaviour is actually considered as immoral. And with help from Shafer and Raney I claimed that a spectator can look for reasons other than those that have to do with morality, when he recognizes schemata for morally questionable protagonists. And, finally, I argued how it is unlikely that a spectator sympathizes with a character because of his immoral behaviour, as someone might use as an argument to explain a spectator’s sympathy for immoral characters. Actual perverse allegiances are probably for the spectator who himself maintains a questionable morality. The occurrence of perverse sympathies is more likely, but they still only function by virtue of redeemable factors.
19
3.
R
EASONS TO SYMPATHIZE WITH A
CHARACTER
I have established that a spectator looks for reasons to form and maintain a sympathetic or antipathetic allegiance with a character. Then, I have explained several mechanisms that can be at work in a film that can influence the spectator’s search for reasons. Now the following question needs to be answered: where from can the spectator draw these reasons? There are numerous factors that can play a part here. First, I will outline more specifically elements in the narrative in which a spectator can find reasons to maintain his allegiance. This includes a character’s behaviour, which is important for evaluating him positively or negatively, a character’s function in the story and his position in relation to other characters. In the second section, I will distinguish elements in film style, such as mise-en-scène and cinematography. Of course, the outlined elements and possible reasons to sympathize with a character are never as independent as they are presented here, since in practice they work together, carefully orchestrated by the filmmaker. Moreover, all of the above work together with the spectator’s background knowledge. Furthermore, this chapter does not provide an exhaustive list, but is meant to give an impression of the variety of film style factors that have the ability to influence the spectator’s sympathies.
Friendly to dogs: reasons in narrative
With regard to narrative, there are several elements from which a spectator can draw reasons to sympathize with a character. First of all, a character’s behaviour or attitude is essential for the spectator’s evaluation of him. In the first section of the previous chapter I explained what is generally considered as moral and immoral in Western moral standards. With regard to ‘bad’ and ‘good’ behaviour of characters in film, Cynthia Hoffner and Joanne Cantor do not speak of morality, but of social desirability and favourable and unfavourable behaviour (1991, 64). They quote empirical studies that show that social acts such as being generous, helpful and polite lead to identification as a good person, whereas harming other people, gambling, drinking and starting fights are all acts that lead to an identification as a ‘bad’ person (70-71). Motivation also plays a big part here: when aggressive behaviour occurs as self-defence or is considered socially acceptable (for example when arresting a criminal) it is considered justified (71-72). Yet, as
20 Sternberg has shown, the spectator is able to look for justifications like these himself, even when they are not in the film text, when he has sympathy for the character. Carroll adds that the behaviour of a major character towards minor characters can improve our impression of them (qtd. in Smith 1995, 190), especially when those characters have our sympathies. Smith explains this more specifically and writes that “thoughtful, generous, solicitous behaviour on the part of characters towards physically and socially weaker characters elicits a positive evaluation”. Indeed, when someone behaves badly towards elderly or children, he can count on strong disapproval. Same goes for the behaviour towards domestic pets (1995, 190). So characters being nice and helpful to the less fortunate are expected to be nice, socially desirable people, and the spectator can take this as a reason to sympathize with a character.
The interaction between characters works in other ways too. Instead of a protagonist behaving nicely towards physically and socially weaker characters, sympathetic supporting characters behaving nicely towards the (immoral) protagonist also elicits the spectator’s sympathies for the protagonist. Physically or socially weaker supporting characters, such as elderly, handicapped or children, elicit the spectator’s sympathy more easily. Imagine a murderer who is taken under the wings of an old Mother Theresa type of character. This woman (an easily recognizable character type) elicits the spectator’s sympathy easily, and thus, the murderer seems a lot more sympathetic too. Because if that woman recognizes a good heart in him, he probably essentially is a good man. Smith turns to Hannibal Lecter again to illustrate this, arguing that something of Clarice Starling’s goodness “rubs off” on Lecter (Smith 1999, 226). After all, she is an intelligent, caring woman and she sees something trustworthy or acceptable in Lecter, which helps the spectator see that too, even if he principally did not. Naturally, the spectator often does not go through this whole thought process: it works more automatically. So sympathetic supporting characters can make the immoral or unlikable protagonist look more sympathetic. Yet ‘bad’ supporting characters can have this effect too. When they are more immoral than the protagonist, they can make him look less immoral. When the protagonist has an affair, but his friend has an affair with two women, or impregnates his mistress or hits his wife, the ‘simple’ affair of the protagonist becomes relatively acceptable. This supporting character then establishes the earlier explained black and grey morality, making the protagonist seem not that bad.
Another narrative factor is a character’s personality traits. Because to be immoral does not necessarily mean to be unsympathetic. Besides the moral valence a character’s behaviour gets, a character might have character traits or talents that will have us sympathize with him. As Gaut writes: a character “may be witty, physically attractive, interestingly complex, and so forth” (1999, 211). Bransford writes about the redeemability meter on his blog on novel writing (2009). A character might have enough charisma, that when one detracts his immoral
21 actions/behaviour, there is still enough left to have one sympathize with him. And in film, one might argue, there are even more ways to present a character’s charisma. First of all, the spectator gets to see him (as opposed to characters in novels), and through editing and cinematography, there are many options in how the or she is represented.
Another way of eliciting the spectator’s sympathy in narrative is by putting the character in a vulnerable position. I have explained that a feeling of pity is not synonymous to sympathy. But Plantinga is right in concluding that pity is usually accompanied by sympathy. When someone is in need, in danger, hurt or treated unfairly, the spectator’s pity is invoked and he feels concern and care for that person, he has sympathy. In film, seeing a character in a situation like that can thus be a reason for a spectator to feel sympathy and/or maintain his allegiance.
In this section, with help from Hoffner and Cantor and Smith, I have outlined various from which a spectator can draw reasons to sympathize with a character. In essence, behaviour that is social towards others is considered as ‘right’ behaviour. Especially behaviour towards the physically or mentally weaker, such as children, elderly and pets, are a flagpole for spectators to evaluate a character as moral or immoral. Supporting characters can also influence this evaluation: they might be more immoral, making the protagonist relatively moral; or they might be more sympathetic than the protagonist and (partially) trust him nevertheless, making him look more sympathetic too. And finally, seeing a character in need or being unfairly treated can also be a reason for a spectator to sympathize with him or her. Depending on the mechanisms explained in the previous chapter, these factors can be reasons for a spectator to feel sympathy for a character and, as a consequence, develop and/or maintain allegiance.
Neat haircut: reasons in film style
Besides a character’s behaviour, and the way the narrative portrays this, the film style can also provide reasons for a spectator to sympathize with a character. In this section, reasons the spectators can find in mise-en-scène, cinematography and editing to feel for a character are outlined. First of all, often, when we get to know a character, his physical characteristics, which are part of the mise-en-scène, are the first thing we can easily evaluate. Hoffner and Cantor wrote about a broad selection of observable features of a character, which they took from numerous empirical studies. Some of these focussed on interpersonal impressions, rather than impressions of media or fictional characters (1991, 64). Naturally, there are important differences between these two, yet the results are useful because they point towards the wide range of observable features that can influence the spectator’s evaluation of a character. Physically attractive people, for example, are perceived to have more socially desirable personality traits than unattractive ones (66). Body types also raise a lot of associations in
22 people: muscular people are perceived as strong, and more likely to be leaders, whereas overweight people are perceived as lazier yet more warm-hearted (67). The manner of dress can tell a spectator something about the character’s occupation (when wearing a uniform) and social status (rich/poor). Yet also more implicit associations with clothing were found: glasses were perceived as connoting intelligence and heroes are usually clean and well-dressed (68). Next to all these parts of the physical appearance, Hoffner and Cantor write about speech characteristics, which are also part of the character’s body. Pitch variation, volume and accent, but also linguistic variables such as sentence length, use of polite words and phrases and grammatical errors, all have an effect on the listener and thus viewer (68-69).
The actor who plays the character can also influence the spectator’s allegiance in other ways than his appearance or voice, namely because of the background knowledge the spectator has of him or her. When the actor is a star with charisma, it can make us have a more positive evaluation of the character he plays. This was even more so the case in the classical film, where actors were more often typecasted. Thus, a certain actor immediately activated schemata in the spectator, of a character with a certain set of character traits (Smith 1995, 119). Nowadays, some actors are still typecast but usually actors have a less clearly set out set of character traits than before. The image a spectator has of an actor can be caused by the previous roles he has played, but also by a positive image of his real life person.
A film’s cinematography and editing have a lot of control on how things are shown and can thus also aid in providing reasons for spectators. Gaut writes for example that even though the point-of-view shot is said to help understand a character from the inside, or aligns the spectator with them in Smith’s words, a shot of the reaction of that character says a lot more about what the character is going through (1999, 210). Yet, as Carroll argues, the POV-shot and the character reaction shot (or what Branigan calls the “point/glance” shot and the “point/object” shot (1984, 103)) intensify each other. The reaction shot shows the spectator roughly which emotion the character is feeling. When the POV shot follows, we look for whatever in that shot was the cause for that emotion. At the same time, the POV shot that shows the object or cause of emotion, deepens and clarifies the emotion we saw on the character’s face (Carroll, 135-136). Another way cinematography can influence the spectator’s sympathy is by the position of the camera: when a character is always from below, he probably looks more authoritarian than sympathetic for example.
In this chapter I concluded Part One by describing elements from which spectators can draw reasons to sympathize and/or maintain their allegiance. First I described some narrative elements, such as a character’s behaviour towards supporting characters and his other attractive traits. I have also described a selection of reasons in film style for a character to
23 sympathize with a character. The physical characteristics of a character, such as his clothes, posture and hair, as well as his voice and manner of speech, already give the spectator a lot of cues for evaluation. Part of this is determined by the choice for the actor/actress who will play the character. This actor also brings along previous films and sometimes even a personal attitude the spectator might have background knowledge of, influencing the spectator’s allegiances. In summary, reasons for a spectator to sympathize with a character can be found both in the film’s narrative, and in the film’s style.
24
PART
TWO
4.
S
CORSESE AND THE MORALLY
QUESTIONABLE
The films I will analyse in this second part of the thesis are chosen from Martin Scorsese’s oeuvre. His films are usually set in New York, often have characters of Italian origin, and often contain scenes with long steadicam or tracking takes. Yet most importantly, the protagonists have more often than not been involved in killing men, hitting women, stealing money and/or cheating on their girlfriends or wives. Apart from their morally questionable behaviour, Scorsese’s protagonists also often show character traits that contrast with the ones of the traditional hero protagonist: they can be self-destructive like Jake LaMotta in Raging Bull (1980),mentally disturbed like Teddy Daniels in Shutter Island (2010) or socially awkward and obsessive like Rupert Pupkin in King of Comedy (1983). Both the protagonists’ ‘wrong’ actions and their questionable personalities make Scorsese’s films a suitable object to analyse to understand how a film can guide a spectator’s allegiance towards a morally questionable main character. As mentioned in the introduction of this thesis, the films chosen from Scorsese’s oeuvre for this thesis are Taxi Driver (1976), Goodfellas (1990) and The Wolf of Wall Street (2013). These films are different from each other in several ways, composing a diverse corpus in which I seek to discover the various ways a film can elicit sympathies and manage allegiances. First I will argue why the protagonists of these three films can be considered immoral or, at the least, morally questionable. Then I will explain how I will proceed in the analysis of the three films.
The first film to be analysed in Chapter Five, Taxi Driver, revolves around an antihero who is morally questionable and can even be considered amoral: Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) judges everyone by some kind of moral standards, yet they are his moral standards. These are slightly different from the ones one can assume as being accepted by most people. He is an antihero because he has various character traits that oppose the ones of a hero: he is socially incapable, he seems to be a racist and he is a loner. Though often called a classic antihero by popular culture, Bickle is also recognized as a “bad guy”. AFI’s list of 100 Greatest Villains and
25
Heroes, for example, places him 30th on the villains list3 (“AFI’s 100 Years” 2003). This
ambiguity further establishes Bickle’s status as an antihero.
Bickle proves to be morally flawed multiple times. He plans to kill president candidate Charles Palantine and is shown buying weapons and working out in preparation. By most moral standards, killing, and thus wanting to and preparing for killing someone, is wrong. It can be redeemed if the killer has a justifiable reason to do so, yet Bickle does not: he does not have a personal objection against Palantine, nor does he disapprove of his political position. Another moment in which Bickle proves to be amoral, is when he ‘happens’ to kill a man when he is getting groceries and the shop is being robbed. Indeed, Bickle shows little worry or remorse for shooting the robber, possibly because the man is black, as he is a racist too. On the day of the planned attack on Palantine, Bickle is recognized by one of Palantine’s security guards and runs. Instead, he goes to a brothel of a recently befriended teenage prostitute and shoots her pimp and two other men who were at the scene. He survives and is celebrated as a hero, yet the spectator knows that if it were not for the security guard who recognized him at the Palantine event, Bickle might have killed Palantine instead. So his actions only turned out to be morally redeemable by chance, but his plans and motivations were morally wrong.
Henry Hill (Ray Liotta), the main character in Goodfellas, which will be analysed in Chapter Six, is a gangster, which almost automatically comes with questionable morality. As a kid, he already did small jobs for the gangsters in his neighbourhood. Thus, Hill grows up to be a respected member of the gangster family. Though the killing is always carried out by other members of the gang and not Hill himself, he helps bury the bodies, and does not speak of the murders to other people, protecting the killers. He is involved in a lot of crimes, such as blowing up places, carrying out heists and dealing drugs. He is also unfaithful to his wife, with more than one woman. Those are all harmful acts that can thus be considered immoral and undesirable.
Contrary to Bickle and Hill, the protagonist of The Wolf of Wall Street, Jordan Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio), does not kill or beat people up. Yet he is definitely an immoral person. With his own stock broking company he gains a lot of money over the backs of both the rich and the poor. He cheats on his wife with prostitutes, takes drugs daily, lies to everyone, tries to bribe the FBI agent who is after him and then turns his friends in when he gets caught in the end. Belfort may not kill anyone, but he does everything else considered immoral, and he does not seem to be worried doing it. Moreover, he hurts a lot more people with his actions than Bickle and Hill did. And, when it comes to black and grey morality, it seems like Belfort is the black:
3 AFI defines a villain as a character whose “wickedness of mind, selfishness of character and will to
power are sometimes masked by beauty and nobility”. Furthermore, the villain is ultimately tragic (“AFI’S 100 Years” 2003).
26 there is not another, ‘worse’ character who makes him look less immoral. Also, his motivations make him less redeemable than those of Bickle and Hill: his only goal seems to become rich.
The Wolf of Wall Street has been the cause of a lot of controversy, because the film
mostly revolves around good things that come from his immoral behaviour4. As one annoyed
spectator puts it: “500 pairs of tits, 1000 lines of coke, countless pills. Three hours of watching a terrible prick” (Hanzo53 2014). At the same time, others sympathized with the character and praised DiCaprio’s performance. As one reviewer wrote: “I rooted for him during the entire movie, even though he is depicted as the biggest scoundrel ever” (Simões 2014). This shows the film is a perfect argument for how spectators play an active role in watching a film and finding reasons to feel sympathy or antipathy for the protagonist. It seems like Scorsese hit the thin line here, between giving just enough reasons to sympathize with Belfort and not giving enough reasons to sympathize with him. This makes The Wolf of Wall Street an all the more interesting object to analyse.
Revolving around a morally questionable antihero, gangster and Wall Street criminal, the three films offer three different kinds of problematic moralities. Furthermore, the protagonists do not only have differing moral stances, but their personalities also contain different character traits that influence the spectator’s sympathies for them. Where Bickle is socially lacking, Hill has seemingly effortless social interaction with everyone in his gangster world. Belfort, in his turn, is smooth too, but is also arrogant and loud. In conclusion, because of the different kinds of morality the protagonists present, their different sets of character traits and the differing environments the narratives are set in, the films will also have different ways of presenting the character’s questionable moralities to elicit sympathies and allegiance in the spectator. Thus they can help to understand how a film directs a spectator’s sympathies to create and maintain allegiance with a morally questionable protagonist.
To distinguish the ways the three films guide the spectator’s sympathies and allegiance, I will first look at the films’ opening sequence, that often but not always immediately contains the exposition of the character. The opening sequence of a film is important for the spectator’s recognition of a character, with possible first sympathies and antipathies for a character, but also for the spectator’s recognition of story schemata. After analysing what first sympathies and antipathies are elicited for the character in the opening sequence, I will research what reasons the rest of the film provides for maintaining or challenging the initial valence. More importantly, I will analyse how the films present these reasons. I will analyse the film text and not pay attention to the fact that a spectator might already have little or a lot of information about the
4 TV Tropes interestingly calls this the “Do Not Do This Cool Thing” Trope: when a film means to warn the
spectator about something he should avoid, yet makes that thing look so appealing that the message is undermined (“Do Not Do This Cool Thing” 2014).
